Always Alright
by Lafayette1777
Summary: Sanity is a relative thing, and after months at the hand of ruthless captors Q is left questioning his even more than usual. And, of course, his relationship with James Bond is not a reliable indicator. Even if Bond is the only company he wants, in the long run. Sequel to The Best Laid Plans, but can be read separately.
1. Clarity, or Lack Thereof

**Author's Note: Hello everyone! So, to those who know me, this is the first chapter of the promised sequel to _The Best Laid Plans._ If you don't know me, then this is the first chapter of a multi-chapter fic that can be read separately of it's prequel, though I would encourage you to read my other story for purely selfish reasons. Anyways, I expect this fic to be rather different than _The Best Laid Plans_, because of a shift in point-of-view and shorter, less action filled plot. Regardless, I hope you all enjoy and please review!**

The sniper rifle allows such an intoxicating level of clarity to its user. Through the lens, the world becomes very uncomplicated. The rifle enables distance, which in turn enables simplicity, and with a finger on the trigger the universe becomes very black and white.

James Bond has always thought that if he lives to retirement age, sees the time when he no longer has the wherewithal to leap around with razors between his knuckles or a Walther under his arm, he'll become a sniper. Get the job done by raining cut-and-dry death from above. Protect Queen and Country until what's left of his soul finally fails him forever.

Two and a half hours ago he awoke in a hotel room with the distinct notion that today would be a day that could be neither stood nor understood—it would be either inexplicably unfair or ridiculously fortunate, and both would be, in their own way, unbearable. Half an hour after that he steps out of a scorching shower and catches his cell phone on the last ring, with Moneypenny on the other end telling them they've confirmed the target's position and are moving in to retrieve him imminently. It's only later, when Bond shows up at the scene along with the field agents and the double-O's being deployed, that he realizes she wasn't supposed to tell him this. His knowledge was planned to be latent, but Moneypenny has always been a little more virtuous than she lets on.

But it's too late, so they hand him a high powered rifle and tell him to go climb a windmill, which he wastes no time in doing. The turbines spin lazily behind him as he braces himself against the flat surface, watching the fenced compound while wrapped in camouflaging reflective foil. Through the lens he watches the black clad figures surround the target area in the concealing predawn light. He hears their short, clipped radio chatter in his ear and swallows the ache that comes whenever he thinks of the voice that used to drift smoothly through his earwig.

On the signal, three dozen MI6 operatives storm the fence, guns blazing. They leap through the barbed wire unflinchingly, roll gracefully into standing positions as they hit the icy ground. Ragtag guards stream from the compound's buildings, flailing Kalashnikovs and Ak-47s ineffectually. A fully trained strike force is almost unbeatable, and this mission has been so well planned it's a virtual guarantee that the agents will triumph, on the whole. It's a matter of speed, now—a question of who will get to the retrieval target first.

A commotion draws Bond's sights to the southwest corner of the area, where a door is slammed open and a familiar figure swaggers forward. Tove Baek is bundled against the Icelandic cold, her blonde hair stuffed under a fox fur hat, leather gloved hands clasping two nine millimeter pistols. Her husband, Dae-Jung Baek, wearing a tasteful maroon scarf (Bond can't help but admire it for a moment, because separation does strange things to strange minds), is clawing at her, trying to persuade her out of the agents' line of fire and away from certain death. She shoots off a few rounds into the crowd of invaders, then slips behind a low cement building and around to it's backdoor, Dae-Jung on her heels. Time passes, with every muscle in Bond's body tensed. Eons later they emerge again, dragging a shape that at first he mistakes for a dead animal, but unfolds into a full grown person. A person with olive toned skin, shaggy dark hair. A person with a thick beard below a broken and crookedly healed nose. A person with thin, bruised wrists and tattered, bloodstained clothes. Bond chokes. Dae-Jung holds the ragged creature and Tove raises one of her guns to it's unkempt curls.

"I have a shot," Bond rasps. The airwaves are silent in the response. He stabilizes his sights between Tove's eyes. Still, no sound from his comrades, and he allows one eye to slide to where the earwig has slipped from it's cradle in his ear canal and on to the windmill beside him. As far as he's concerned, this signifies that the universe has affirmed his actions.

Across the icy plains a single gunshot rings, and blood splatters across Dae-Jung Baek's acetate-rimmed glasses.

m m m

The moment his feet touch the earth, the rifle drops from James Bond's hands, and he breaks into a sprint that tweaks his strained thigh muscle from last week. Personnel are flooding into the compound, medics and clean-up crews, and Bond's long strides push through them to where gore and flesh stain the ice. Tove Baek's body is being zipped into black bag, leaving bits of her hair and skull where she fell. Dae-Jung has collapsed, eyes glassy, mouth half open in shock. He sees Bond and it seems to jar him to the reality of the situation, and he lets from his lips a strangled little _"no."_Agents pull Dae-Jung away before Bond does something inevitably rash.

The third person is being lifted onto a backboard, face pale and strained. His eyes are shut tight, as though fending off pain or exhaustion or fear. The medics secure him, and as one reaches out to take his pulse he seems to spring awake, hazel eyes fierce and lucid. His eyes meet Bond's, whose carefully composed gaze is struck down into it's primal elements of relief and horror and disbelief. Neither man says a word.

And then the impossible happens: Q's face twists into a smile, showing off a chipped front tooth, enunciating the jagged line of his nose and cracked, dried liquid on his skin. The expression should be grotesque, but it's too pure. Months have passed and agony has etched lines in both their faces but nothing can damage a full smile.

Then he's gone, whisked away to be healed as best they can.

Moneypenny has appeared at Bond's side, speaking efficiently into a mobile phone. "He's alive. We'll be in Reykjavik in an hour."

She hangs up, and turns to Bond. Her smile is not quite as pure, because she is fully in touch with actuality, or at least the MI6 verisimilitude of it. She knows the protocols that follow the rescue of high level employees from enemy captivity, and in some ways they are as formidable as the captivity itself. Debrief, quarantine, reevaluation, reintegration. Exponential time and stress.

She communicates as much as she can through silence, though on some level Bond already knows that this is not the end of their troubles. Rather, it is the beginning of something infinitely new.


	2. The Quick and the Dead

It's December, and when they arrive in Reykjavík at three in the afternoon the sun's already dipping behind the great wall of ice and rock that overshadows the harbor. A cutting breeze blows through his coat and scarf the moment he steps from the company car, but he hardly notices, a trance settling over his senses. It's most unnerving for a man of his profession, but he can't lift it away, and the world numbs into an inconceivable lull outside his head. On instinct, he reaches out to steady Moneypenny as she wobbles onto the curve, her habit of wearing impractical heels undeterred by her physical condition. The left side of her face briefly droops from fatigue, but she regains control of it again with a little concentration. Recovering, she shepherds his stiff limbs across the sidewalk, toward the airport terminal. His mind races as she checks them in, as she smiles at the airport staff like the universe is still as perfect and orderly as it was ten months ago.

It's only when she shoves him gently into a first class seat does his brain snap back to attention. He grabs her wrist. "Where is he?"

Her eyes only betray the slightest alarm at his sudden return to the living, and she replies coolly, "They've got him on a private jet back to Medical. Molony is standing by in London for him."

"He's okay."

"He's alive."

"I can't believe it."

She settles into her seat, and he hears the soft click of the seatbelt clasping together over her trim waist. "In all honesty, I can't either."

"You thought we lost him?" he doesn't bother to keep the offense out of his voice, irrational though it may be.

"Did you?"

Bond looks at her, azure eyes oddly blank. "I didn't think anything at all."

"For all those months?" she asks, a hint of a smile on the edge of her mouth.

When he doesn't reply, the smile drops.

m m m

Moneypenny sleeps through the flight, and as time passes the creases slowly melt off her face. This is her ritual, he supposes, after a mission: let slumber erase whatever demons get left behind.

And so he employs his traditional actions also—in his case, the only ritual is to get inebriated in as short a time as possible. He's built up a considerable tolerance, so it takes seven dirty martinis just to get him to feel any buzz at all. The flight attendants watch him carefully when he stands to use the loo, and their surprise is nearly palpable when they don't see him sway in the slightest.

On the ground in England he starts to regret the martinis. Not because the buzz isn't lightening his spirits but because he shouldn't _need_ his spirits lightened—this is a day that has occupied his thoughts as long as he allows his memory to go back. This is a day to remember. This day should make all those months irrelevant.

But he should've known the guilt would survive.

m m m

The moment their feet hit the floor of the MI6 lobby, Moneypenny's called into a meeting. It's undoubtedly something to do with the recovery of the Quartermaster, and before she's herded off she sends him a warning look and hisses, for what he presumes is appearances sake, "Remember protocol."

He waits exactly thirty-two seconds before ignoring this completely.

In the elevator, the floors lower and the bewildered looks increase. The higher the security clearance, it seems, the more amazed the employee is that not only does James Bond appear to be acting like a semi normal human being, but that the Quartermaster has been returned in what one can only be assumed is one piece.

By the time he's arrived in Medical, he's in no mood for questioning glances, and so choses a stride with such purpose that no one can muster the will to challenge him. His ears guide him to the voice, that familiar, evenly toned cadence that is currently engaged in explaining, in great detail, all his known injuries to a rapidly scribbling nurse.

Bond snaps open the curtain around his bed just in time to hear Q murmur calmly, "And I'm fairly sure I'm missing a kidney..."

Suddenly overwhelmed by the sight of him, all Bond can spit out is, "How would you know such a thing?"

Q raises a frank eyebrow. "Suspicious scar, unaccounted lapse in memory. I can't confirm it, of course," -he looks imploringly at the nurse- "but it's worth looking into, yes?"

She nods, looking rather stunned by his forthrightness, and asks tightly, "Anything else?"

"That's all I'm aware of, thank you."

As she leaves, Bond nicks the carbon copy of her report from her clipboard with a stealth that impresses even himself. He reads through the list of terms with a growing, yet still carefully contained, sort of horror. _Badly healed bullet wound three inches from femoral artery, broken orbital bone, broken and incorrectly healed nose, three missing teeth, broken humerus, radius, and assorted fingers, cracked ribs, bruised organs, assorted lacerations, whip slashes, and burns, deep muscle bruises, possible removed kidney..._

Bond looks up at Q's swollen features and, before he can stop himself, he asks, "How did you manage it?"

Q is propped up by pillows, and though to someone unversed in Q's postures he would seem casual, it is abundantly obvious to Bond that he has arranged himself very carefully, and, despite this, is still in pain. He's conscious only because of sheer will power alone. "Sanity is the key," Q explains matter-of-factly. "And, as I am already insane, they could affect only my body. My mind remained untouchable, considering that since it is out of my reach most of the time, it was certainly out of theirs."

This is where Bond would tell him that he's sorry. That if he'd just gotten there a little sooner, run a little faster, this conversation would never have to happen. That for once, Bond doesn't want to be the reason Q is in danger. He might even venture to make oaths—that he won't let this happen again, that they'll be together as they should in whatever capacity they can think of. He wants to say that usually when he fucks up this bad he never gets a chance to apologize to the person he's ruined, and he's tired of this pattern that haunts him at every turn, through a thousand lifetimes. He wants to say he's never felt like this before, because it might be true. But he doesn't.

His feet are just beginning to move him toward Q when a surprisingly firm hand grabs him by his collar and yanks him out of the room.

In the hallway, Moneypenny looks up at him fiercely.

"You can't be here," she says urgently. "I meant what I said before the meeting. Now it's too late."

"What are you talking about?"

"They don't know if Q's been compromised yet. He's not supposed to have any contact with high level staff before he goes through the tests, for security reasons. And Mallory already knows your here."

"How?"

She narrows her eyes at his sudden thickness, and points to a camera above their heads. "What the hell do you think that is? But now he's going to put you on assignment until they get Q squared away, so you won't interfere."

"He's not been compromised. That's ridiculous. And Tove's dead anyways."

She shakes her head hurriedly. "We're translating her archives from Finnish as we speak. It's as we predicted. Tove Baek had ties to have a dozen anarchist cells, beyond her relationship with the Marteles. Those are not the sort of people we need to get infiltrated by."

"Q wouldn't—"

"That's not the point. He's going to go through the same hurdles as every other recovered employee and you're going to be abroad while it happens."

He takes a step back, betrayed.

"I tried to warn you," she says, some of the sympathy returning to the pits of her eyes. "But this is massive. Bigger than either of us."

The sound of pattering, well tailored shoes on tile floors reaches them, and all that Bond can squeeze from his lips as M rounds the corner is, "Shit."


	3. Islamabad

Gareth Mallory is not a particularly merciful man, but he likes to think he is. And he is a member of an elite intelligence community, so lying, even to himself, is not really a stretch.

So he takes pity on Bond and sends him not to Yemen, or any other dry country, but to Oaxaca, where he trusts that the agent will hand off the designated USB drive then hunker down and drink himself into oblivion. And if he's drinking himself into oblivion, at least he's not causing international incidents or making contact with possibly compromised personnel.

Sacrifices must be made. And you can't always get what you want, which Mallory figures Bond should know better than anybody by now.

m m m

Separated again, he finds himself empty, like a house in a Hopper painting. His mind—if not directly engaged in pulling out his passport or reading a Spanish sign or buckling a seatbelt with more care than is necessary for a task so simple and familiar—is enveloped by the image of Q, so carefully arranged in a bed in Medical, thin neck cocked to one side. The bespectacled eyes so clearly ask, "So where does this leave us?" as he takes in Bond's guilt and desperation and lack of control. And Bond has no way to answer him now, even if he could think of a response even remotely close to the truth.

Oaxaca is fine. Lovely, even. For alcoholics, for secret agents, for scores of tourists and businessmen and locals and students and loads of other members of the human race. But Bond can't stay. He gets the job done because he's forgotten how not to, and instead of making contact with HQ, with a meaningless member of Q-Branch who will refer to him as "Commander Bond" rather than "007, you prick," he decides to go straight to the airport.

He knows he can't go home, that Mallory will catch him and send him someplace far less comfortable, some place that will keep him entangled in work and people. And Bond has always liked to maintain some illusion of control, entertain some reality where his choices are his own.

So a day and a half later he's breathing in the soothing, welcoming air of Islamabad, a city that has never failed to pull together the pieces of his psyche. He luxuriates in the apartment buildings and the mosques, the parks and the traffic, the rhythm of Urdu on the radio and the Perso-Arabic calligraphy on the signs.

Q still lingers behind his eyelids, but their situation somehow seems so much more resolved now, so much more manageable. With the breeze of Islamabad pressing so insistently against the stubble on his chin, a preternatural knowledge rests on him, he thinks, and he sees Q recovering fully, or at least back to the physical state he was in before. He is, of course, uncompromised, and the trauma of captivity fades into the past so he can return to duty, return as the voice in Bond's ear. He sees their relationship as unstressed, leaving it to be whatever it's destined to be, though he hasn't quite figured out what that is yet.

He even entertains the notion—the fantasy, really—of the two of them, some day in the future, in Islamabad together.

He allows the thought to fester, even though he's fully aware of it's level of impossibility. Always impossible, even before Tove Baek's rampage, because Q doesn't fly. Not because he's afraid, as Moneypenny once perceived and passed on, but because of the chronic spinal injury that prevents him from maintaining a sitting position for any long period of time. It's a true shame, Bond thinks, because there's something in Q that he believes really might enjoy travel, the adventure of it all. As it is, though, Q has only left the UK twice.

Three times, Bond has to remind himself. Tove's Icelandic compound.

He can hardly contemplate the agony it must've been for Q flying over there under Tove's watchful eye, constantly having to weigh the enormity of the pain against the fear of her finding out his pressure point, if she didn't know it already, and exploiting it. He pushes the image of Q's strained face from his mind, before the rest of the horror comes, as he intends to stay sane.

But he remains in Islamabad for three days, wandering the streets, touching up his language skills, breathing in, and on the third day he's already feeling London drawing him back, even before Moneypenny rings. She's relieved he's using his Q-Branch approved mobile again, the one he could barely look at for the last few months.

"M says you can come back, if you think you can handle it," she relays.

He snorts involuntarily, because he's fairly sure no one has ever mistaken him for the stable type. "How is he?"

"He's doing alright, I think. There's been so much going on I haven't even made it down to see him when he's awake. They have him in and out of surgery, fixing all the half-healed wounds and whatnot. Apparently his face was all swollen after they repaired his orbital, and it's so odd to imagine him so undignified, isn't it?"

Bond almost feels himself begin to smile at this, before it occurs to him that torture and it's aftermath really is the most undignified thing there is. "I'll fly out as soon as possible."

m m m

At baggage claim in Heathrow, Moneypenny is waiting for him.

"M send you to spy on me?" he asks wearily.

"I'm doing you a favor," she replies, looking up from her watch. "He's got no quarrels with sending you off to the Atacama desert without a map if you forget yourself. I don't want that anymore than you do."

She's right, of course, but that doesn't stop him from silently wishing that he could have engineered a way to fly in to Gatwick, just to throw her off.

Moneypenny gives him a withering look, like she's reading his mind.

"I don't know if you'd be interested," she begins cautiously, once they've managed to settle into a cab. "But we're starting our interrogation of Dae-Jung Baek today. Psych's just gotten through with him."

"Do you expect he'll say anything of interest? Or, anything at all, for that matter?"

"If he's got any sense he will," Moneypenny replies. "Though I suppose we shouldn't hold out much hope for a man who married a criminal with vaguely egomaniacal tendencies."

"I suppose not," Bond murmurs, but he can't help thinking of his relationship, or whatever it may be, with someone of not only questionable but often nonexistent sanity.


	4. The Rest of the World

**Author's Note: I'm sorry that it's been thirty years since I've updated this. I've had a hell of a couple of months and I don't expect things to calm down ever again. But I'm gonna try to carve out some time to add to this regularly, because I really do want to finish this story and I'm extremely grateful to anyone reading this. Thanks for sticking with me!**

In the elevator, he peripherally perceives Moneypenny reaching for one of the sub-level buttons, and then entering her access code. As they descend, Bond attempts, half-heartedly, to straighten his clothes, to scratch off a scab of stray dirt from his tundra-colored tie. It's possible that this is the most disheveled he's looked since secondary school, and it's contributing to the current crawling of his skin.

Just before the doors open, he turns to Moneypenny and speaks without thinking at all.

"Does he have books?"

"What?" She feigns confusion, even thought Bond is sure she knows exactly who he's talking about.

"Q," he elaborates anyway. "Wherever your keeping him...in Medical. Does he have books to read?"

"I don't know," she says blankly, still appearing surprised by the softness of his question.

"He needs them," Bond murmurs, almost to himself. "He needs something to do. I could get some."

"Active agents are not supposed to have any contact, direct or indirect."

His eyes sweep up from the floor to meet hers.

"But," she hesitates, eyes squinting momentarily and biting at her thumbnail. "If you gave me a few titles. I could probably a way find to get them to him." She grimaces here, for just a second, looking fiercely away. "Find a way, I mean. Dammit."

The words have mixed in her head, as they have a tendency to do nowadays. Bond wants to let her know that it doesn't matter, that she's just as sharp as she ever was, that everyone's sympathetic. In part because he feels, in some way, as responsible for what happened to her as for what happened to Q—it's all connected to his being just a little too late, all traced back to his failure to protect nearly everyone he's ever cared about. But also because he feels a wave of further fondness for her as she all but pledges to break (or at least bend) the rules for him, for Q. He wants to say that she doesn't have to, that she shouldn't put herself at risk, but the thought of making Q even slightly less miserable and deprived of literature is just too comforting to give up.

All he can say is a slightly strangled "thank you."

Her only reply is a nod, her eyes still holding something of a grimace.

m m m

"A two-way mirror," Bond muses. "How cutting-edge."

Mallory gives him an unimpressed look. "The latest from Q-Branch. It beheads any double-O that misbehaves. Care to see a demonstration?"

Bond snorts and turns to look through the glass, into the fluorescent light of the cell. The field agent seated at the metal table is organizing her notes, as though her knowledge is at all above the bare minimum necessary in a preliminary investigation. Finally, she stops moving, waiting primly as Dae-Jung Baek is escorted in by two MPs on contract. Baek looks frailer, paler, but he's got no obvious wounds on his exposed skin, which likely means he's been cooperating with his captors on British soil. His glasses are gritty, but it's abundantly clear that his eyes are hollow. The MP on his right has to forcefully remind him how to sit down, and Baek does so stiffly, the dazed expression never leaving his face.

"You say he's been cleared by psych?" Bond directs his question to Moneypenny, leaning against the wall.

"Yeah," she replies, without looking up from her phone. "He's apparently lucid and has made no attempts to take his own life."

"He doesn't look lucid."

"Neither do you," she quips, and she's not quite wrong—he's rumpled from the long flight and days of wandering through foreign cities, not to mention the culmination of months of some form of insomnia. Substance abuse, of course, only adds to the weight of all this, creating a combination that would knock most people flat. As it is, he's barely upright. He can see Moneypenny trying very hard not to judge him for his current state of being, and though lying in her profession is often essential, she's doing a remarkably bad job of concealing her emotions.

The agent in the interrogation room states her number and the date for the record. The she turns to Baek without making eye contact.

"Name?"

"Dae-Jung Baek," his voice is ragged, and though audible it's barely above a hoarse whisper.

"Date of birth?"

"10 December 1980."

"Place of birth?"

"Seoul, South Korea."

"He looks really fucked up," Bond murmurs to Moneypenny, as the agent persists through the basics.

"You _did_ shoot his wife in front of him."

He gives her an incredulous look.

"I mean, you did what you had to do," she adds. "But what did you expect? As far as we can tell she was the mastermind of the operation, the one with all the plans for destruction."

"What do we know about her?" Bond asks, looking to Mallory, who has the file open on the desk in front of him. Bond hadn't bothered with details during Q's captivity; there hadn't been room in mind for much else, save desperation and violence.

"She worked in Linguistics, specialized in eastern European languages. Her parents were Finnish but she was born in the UK. Hired by Six in 2004. No red flags on her background check at all. Married Baek in 2006. No worrisome behavior in yearly evaluations, no need for extra surveillance. Her security clearance was marginal, but apparently she managed to get an insider knowledge of a fair number of anarchist cells we've been keeping an eye on. We have reason to believe now that she's the reason the Marteles knew of your infiltration in Komaromy case in Copenhagen."

Bond feels his blood boil unexpectedly at the connection. "Did she have some sort of vendetta against Q then?"

"The prevailing theory is that she was not well," Moneypenny interjects. "She just wanted to fuck things up. It fits with her attraction to the anarchist cells, considering the Marteles seemingly similar creed. Capturing Q, her whole attack on Six, it's just a primal urge to take apart." Moneypenny's anger is clear, the unjustness of all of it reaching for her on a personal level. Agents dead, Q gone, and Eve never quite the same again. All because Tove was hell bent on ruination.

"But she must have known we'd come after Q. That she didn't have a prayer of escaping us for long." Even as Bond says it, he's internally crippled by reminding himself that it took them ten long months to track her down. It shouldn't have taken so long, they _should_ have been better than that for their Quartermaster. But Tove had been wily, unpredictable. Even in death, she's still hard to pin down. Knowing this doesn't alleviate any of his guilt, but he's always lived with guilt and now is no different.

"Cockiness, perhaps," Mallory ruminates. "Or her own madness didn't let her see clearly. These anarchist types aren't always the type to think things through."

Bond isn't sure he believes that, but there's no denying that something about Tove definitely doesn't fit, and Bond fairly sure it has something to do with her relationship with Dae-Jung.

He'd like to think that it's just that love and madness don't fit, but he already knows that's not true.

In the interrogation, the field agent is finishing up her questions. Dae-Jung is only in the preliminary of many stages of questioning to come. It's hard to believe, looking at his hunched figure, that he will possibly have the energy for more.

"Were you aware of Tove Baek's intentions to stage an attack on MI6?"

"Yes." Dae-Jung's eyes have chosen to fix themselves on a spot directly above the agent's carefully styled, ginger bun.

"Were you aware of Tove Baek's intention to capture and hold the Quartermaster of MI6?"

"No."

This, Bond finds curious, but says nothing and stores it away for later contemplation.

The agent closes her manila folder and nods to the MPs, stationed at the door. It takes some prodding, but they manage to get Dae-Jung standing again, and shuffling out of the room. The agent waits a few beats, then leaves and is replaced by a caramel skinned man of a higher rank. Mallory makes an ambiguous motion toward Moneypenny, as though Bond isn't fully conscious and standing right next to him.

"Come with me," Moneypenny says firmly to Bond, and begins to lead him toward the door.

"Why?"

"I've a mountain of paperwork for you to do concerning Q's recovery and your mission in Oaxaca," she replies, hardly bothering to put any effort behind the lie.

"Bullshit," Bond turns back toward the glass, and is almost unsurprised to find Q being lead in between the same two police and with manacled wrists, as protocol states. "I'm staying here."


	5. Total War

**Author's Note: It's been ages, I know. Thanks for hanging on! Oh, and if you don't know already Mary Goodnight is Bond's secretary in the books and I mention her briefly in this chapter. **

His entire right arm, from fingers to shoulder joint, is in a cast. His face is purple and black, his nose straight again but bandaged. There's still some swelling around his right orbital and the scraggly beard has been shaved off, though curls still hang into his eyes from above. The soft cotton of his standard patient attire masks slashes and burns that landscape the once smooth skin of his back. He walks with a heavy limp on his left side from a previously infected bullet wound and a number of half healed ribs. Still, he does not sit down, and no one asks him to. Bond is cruelly thankful that that, at least, hasn't changed. Comfort in the familiar is something he'll never admit to but can also not be repressed.

Mallory sends Bond a withering look, but can't seem to muster the strength to force him out. Bond doesn't bother to return the glare, instead focusing his eyes into the adjoining room.

"Where are his glasses?" Bond asks belligerently, directed at no one in particular.

"Broken," Mallory answers brusquely. "At the moment, being near-sighted isn't his biggest problem, 007."

"This is just the psych evaluation," Moneypenny butts in neutrally. "Mandatory before we can extract and construct the full version of his story."

"'Story'?" Bond snarls.

"Protocol," Moneypenny sighs wearily. "People have been known to fake their own kidnappings."

Bond gives an offended sniff and goes back to ignoring his colleagues.

The agent in the room with Q gives his number and the full date. He looks in Q's general direction, without making eye contact, and asks, "Name?"

Something like a smirk twists the bruises around his mouth. "Q."

The agent raises an eyebrow. He glances down at the file in front of him, but it's clear the Q's real name is above his pay grade. "Date of birth?"

Q gives him a deadpan look and says nothing. Finally, he drawls, "Classified."

Mallory speaks into the agent's earwig. "Skip the formalities, Ortega."

Bond cringes as the agent touches his ear, then gives the slightest of nods. Q rolls his eyes massively.

"We'll start with some word associations," the agent forges ahead. A complete, knowing smile cracks Q's lips and exposes the broken front tooth, still unfixed. The expression looks painful.

"Say whatever comes to your mind first," the agent continues, despite the slightly unnerving mien of the man in front of him. "Iceland."

"Beautiful."

"Agent."

"Useless." The smirk twitches.

"Moneypenny."

Q's expression crumbles, but in the space of a second, rebuilds itself. "Dead."

"No one's told him you're alive?" Bond asks sharply.

"No contact," Moneypenny murmurs, but it's clear that it's only just occurred to her that the last time Q saw her, she had a bullet in her brain. After another few moments, she whispers, "We'll let him know."

In the interrogation room, the agent persists. "MI-6."

"Also useless." Harsh words, but there's a spark of mirth in Q's eyes.

"Honeychurch."

He pauses here, his mouth opening and closing. Then: "Mental."

"M."

"Necessary." The mirth is back. Q is perfectly aware he's being observed, naturally.

"Flight."

"Death."

"Woman."

"Death."

"Man."

"Death."

"007."

The smirk on Q's face replaces itself with a smile that's almost tender, as it spares the briefest of glances toward the mirror. His appearance still has a bit of a vicious edge to it, though, when he answers, "Mine."

Mallory and Moneypenny turn their eyes on Bond. He turns on his heel, and without a word, marches out of the room and into the hallway. He barely makes it around the corner into a secluded enclave before he's laughing hysterically, all traces of English stoicism replaced by a wet, desperate choking sound. He smiles so brutally it's practically a grimace. It takes him a long time to recover his breath and dam the water in his eyes. The surreality of it all has caught him off guard. A few weeks ago the thought of never seeing Q again was constantly at the gates of his conscious mind, waiting for his guard to drop in order to lower him completely into despair. Now, in such a short time, not only is Q returned, but they're playing the same games they used to. As if no time has passed.

It's an illusion, of course. Time has continued it's slip slide into the future, into oblivion. Things are not the same at all.

He rises, smoothing the contours of his suit. In the elevator, he presses the floor for the double-O offices. His secretary, upon his arrival at the office he so rarely bothers with, informs him that he does, indeed, have a mountain of paperwork to contend with. For the first time in his career, it's a welcome distraction.

m m m

"This isn't like you," Mary Goodnight observes, as he puts a stack of immaculate papers on her desk by six in the evening.

He gives her a thin smile. No, it's not like him at all. In the last ten months, he's forgotten what _is_ like him, giving up on trying to maintain normal 007 behavior. People excused it, with his significant other captured and possibly dead. But now they'll expect him to become James Bond again, full metal. Now that Q's back they'll believe, like he once did, that simplicity will return, or the MI-6 idea of it.

He may be ashamed to admit it, but there is some part of him that believes James Bond got lost along the way.

He'd be lying if he tried to postulate that something didn't shift that day he dallied on his way back from the airport, already late off a delayed flight in from Kuala Lumpur. It would be an untruth to posit that he didn't feel himself sliding away when he arrived triumphantly in Q-Branch, only to find three dead Minions slumped over their desks and Moneypenny lying in an impossibly large pool of blood and brain matter. It would be total falsehood to say that he didn't feel something shrivel inside when he crashed into Q's office and was greeted by a smashed window and a bloodstain.

Ten months had allowed that shift to fester. Guilt, desperation, forced detachment. At times (always at night), resignation. The James Bond of before was gone. He'd been gone for quite a while. And Q, though returned, was gone too. After ten months, Bond didn't believe there was any way he couldn't be.

m m m

"Took you long enough."

Bond stands in the doorway, looking dazed. Q folds the page in his book and puts it on the nightstand. Bond's eyes follow it, reading the title silently. _Catch-22_. He isn't surprised in the slightest.

"Protocol," Bond finds the strength to form words. "Mallory dictating, the formidable Moneypenny enforcing."

"Moneypenny's alive?" He sits forward in incredulity, winces with a hand on his ribs, and then lays back again. Bond chokes, but manages to nod.

"They removed the bullet but didn't think she'd wake up. When she did, they said she wouldn't walk. When she managed that they stopped saying anything."

"Is she alright now?" Q asks. His eyes are accented in the warm light of the bedside lamp.

"For the most part," Bond relents. "As right as she'll ever be, she thinks."

It's easy to talk about Moneypenny and forget about themselves for a moment.

"Are _you_ alright now?" Q asks, quieter.

Bond has sat down on the end of the bed, careful not to touch Q. He doesn't speak for a long time, gray eyes boring intently on the floor tiles. "If I'd gotten there a bit sooner, I could've stopped Tove."

"You also could've died."

Bone doesn't register his words. "I could've prevented all of this."

Q hesitates. Too long. "It's not your fault."

Bond gives him a long look. They've always had a silent agreement, and Bond's now violated it. Q protects Bond over the airwaves, with the pressing of a few keys. Bond protects Q with his hands and his Walther. It's an agreement that was supposed to keep them both safe. Maybe Q doesn't fault him on the surface of things but the blame is there. It must be.

"We both know it is," Bond growls.

"It's not." No hesitation this time, and matching Bond's ferocity. "Tove had a small army. Q-Branch is armed to the teeth, as you know. We're all quite literally surrounded by weapons and we, just like all agents, have to know how to use them. You couldn't have made any difference, in the end. You'd just be dead."

Q, relentlessly logical, as always.

"Are you trying to convince me or yourself?" Bond murmurs without looking at him.

"Does it matter? I'm right."

Bond smiles against his better judgement. He's missed that barbed wire tongue. He rises to his feet. "You should rest."

Q opens his mouth, perhaps to protest. But Bond has already slipped out.


	6. Burn Off

**Author's Note: Thank you to everyone who's still out there! I meant to write this about a month ago as a sweet 16 present to myself but life was chaos. So here it is, slightly over a month later and mostly written between two and four in the morning. Ugh. **

The next time he sees Q, there's a disturbing liveliness to the younger man that can only mean one thing.

"I see you've given up on avoiding me for the time being," says Q breathlessly, trying to tie both his shoes at the same time. Even though his eyes are shifty and his body distractingly kinetic, Bond can still hear the hurt in his tone. "They've deemed me still loyal to Queen and Country, in case you're wondering."

"Mallory sent me off," Bond responds, weakly defensive. It's true, of course, but he didn't exactly protest his expedition to Lagos. Seeing Q had only fully instilled in him the antithesis of the peace he'd felt in Islamabad. Nothing had been particularly simple before the business with Tove, of course, but now even that measure of routine and understanding was irretrievable. Being close to Q had made him think of the future and the future unnerved him.

Q doesn't seem to hear him, though, as he gets to his feet unsteadily while finishing off his tie knot with one hand and flipping the page of a Raymond Chandler with the other.

"Have you slept?" Bond asks.

He reaches for the laptop on the bedside table that has appeared since Bond's last visit and shoves it into a backpack without mercy, once again not bothering to answer. Q's thoughts have absorbed him completely, as they have a tendency to do. His lips, though, seem to be moving, the internal monologue spilling into reality. Bond thinks the words may be in Hebrew but the low volume leaves him guessing.

"Where are you going?" Bond tries again.

Finally, Q looks at him, the words appearing to sink in. "I've been discharged. I'm going home."

"Really?"

"Obviously. My injuries are not going to heal faster by lying around and Julian says there's work to be done in Q-Branch."

"There's always work to be done. And you know that rest isn't useless," Bond retorts, and the condescension that works into his tone is not lost on Q, who gives a dry laugh.

"Are _you_ lecturing me about the merits of convalescence? I think even you can see the irony in that, 007."

It's banter that might once have been playful but there's definitely an edge to it now that Bond can't ignore, which uneases him further. Q pulls on his suit jacket and then a wool coat slowly, with a few repressed winces. By the time he's ready to actually leave he seems frustrated by the fact he's breathless, and has to lean against the table a moment, clutching at his side and then sliding his hand down to prod the healed hole in his thigh. The cast on his arm makes one side of his coat bulge, and though the bandages on his face have been removed there's still traces of the bruising. He's had new glasses delivered too, though Bond finds himself missing the old ones, or maybe just the era they represent.

Bond doesn't know what to say, so he asks, "Did you get your tooth fixed?"

"No," rasps Q, and Bond gets the barest glimpse of the gap where the bottom half his right front tooth used to be. "It doesn't bother me."

Q recovers himself and forces the last few books into his backpack, slinging it over his good arm and pushing past Bond with a final, unreadable look. Bond counts to thirty before following him.

m m m

On the sidewalk, Q takes a left and starts hobbling toward the nearest tube station. Clearly, he knows he's being followed, otherwise Bond figures he probably would have just returned to Q-Branch to work madly throughout the night. Instead, he's decided to take Bond for a trip, and Bond is all too interested to know where they'll end up.

Q is walking fast, despite his injuries. The mania in him obviously has been stirring in Bond's absence. It was only a matter of time, Bond reflects, before all the various medications that had kept him mellow wore off and he returned to his usual cycle of madness and recovery. With his physical recuperation progressing and his mental state probably still in shambles from captivity it's not surprise that his disobedient mind would veer toward insanity at the first open moment. Bond wonders idly what Q's psych file must look like at this point, considering his already complex issues even before Tove's crusade on top of all the new trauma, and marvels at the fact they seem to have cleared him for duty. However, it all remains speculation—Q is one of the only personnel whose files are so guarded that even James Bond has not yet managed to infiltrate them, despite his best efforts. And if he stops to think about it too long it becomes infinitely strange, because he can't quite fathom why he feels like he knows and understands Q so well even though the man's real name, date of birth, and most of his life before Six remains a mystery.

His thoughts return to the tangible when he sees Q join the flood of rush hour traffic heading underground, and Bond slips past a few commuters to keep Q's curls just within eyesight. The younger man stops briefly to observe a map, but it's clear enough to someone experienced that Q has really just paused to make sure Bond is following suitably. Two minutes later they board the train and Bond frowns when a young woman vacates her seat for him in deference to his age. He doesn't look but on the other end of the car Q might be smirking.

They get off fifteen minutes later and Q continues his rapid clip down the sidewalk, until the crowds disperse and it's just the two of them, thirty feet apart. Bond doesn't try to catch up. Somehow it doesn't feel appropriate. Q eventually takes a sharp right and disappears into a dimly lit concert hall, decorated in deep reds and creamy beiges and half filled with sleepy middle-aged parents. Q turns again and painfully wobbles up the steps to the empty balcony. He doesn't sit of course, his chronic spinal injury outweighing his newer wounds, and leans against the back wall. He seems a little more composed than he had been in Medical, the brisk walk perhaps burning off some of the manic energy of before. Bond knows Q's general method of coping with hyperactivity is to exercise himself to the point of exhaustion, but with the bullet hole in his femur and uncooperative ribs it appears that won't be a real option for some time.

Bond eventually joins him against the velvety wall, eyes on the orchestra playing on the stage below.

"What is this?" he asks.

"Sibelius," Q replies smoothly. "_Finlandia. _The second chair viola doesn't know what she's doing but they're doing a pretty good job of it overall, for teenagers."

"Can you play it?" 

"Of course."

"You'll have to show me some time."

Q snorts, as though this is an impossibility.

Bond pauses, and then: "Some would consider this a date. Our first, in the conventional sense."

"Interesting location for romance," Q smirks, eyes still on the players.

"Why don't you ever take me some place nice?" Bond whines sarcastically, looking toward the filigreed ceiling. "It does have a certain charm to it, though, I must admit...but for a moment there, I almost thought you were contemplating a visit to your family."

"Don't talk about something you don't understand, 007," his expression has turned from playful to icy in the space of a second. But Bond is never one to back down from a challenge.

"No, I'm intrigued now. Perhaps I always have been...maybe just tired of being kept in the dark. Hard to say," he almost maintains the light tone of before, but now the accusation is undeniably there and it's substantial. Bond finds an anger inside of him he wasn't sure he had—the frustration of always being slightly under-informed. He'd first felt it a year ago approximately, the first Christmas he and Q had been entangled. It was not a holiday he usually felt any need to observe, and on Christmas Eve he'd been in Haifa anyways, chatting fluidly with Q over the comms, as per usual. It was half seven when Q announced he was handing Bond over to Julian Gibbins, Khadija's replacement as second in command in Q-Branch. When Bond had wondered aloud what Q could possibly have to do away from his job and the section of his life Bond understood, he had been met with Q's jarringly bare question of, "Why do you always assume I am alone in this world, 007?" And Bond, oddly, had not had an answer, except perhaps that he may have been living under the belief that he was the only human connection Q bothered to maintain.

"Now is not the time for my life story, Bond. Please."

The pleading in the younger man's voice is what stops Bond from prodding further, the spy in him finally subsiding. On stage the tempo speeds indefinitely into a presto; the second chair viola visibly struggles to keep up with the conductor. Q twitches and seems to have trouble standing still, any reprieve in madness derived from the walk here now passed.

"Do they know you're alive?" Bond asks, against his better judgement. There's another question there, too, he's aware, and it comes from his general lack of information on anything beyond the Q that he thinks he knows. _Do they care if you're alive?_

"I asked that they be informed I've been returned. Security allows that much. Not much consolation, though, I suppose," he murmurs, nearly to himself. "I haven't seen them yet, I'm..."

"You're not sure you'll be the same," Bond finishes, going out on a limb.

Q's face momentarily is devoid of all composure. Bond looks on in awe for the few seconds at the sudden innocence, before Q's lips form a tight line again and his eyes press close. The Sibelius finishes rousingly, to a lukewarm applause. Q turns on his heel to leave and Bond follows without a thought.

Outside again the sky has darkened completely and streetlights cast an amber glow on the mostly empty street. Down the way a noisy pub has expelled a couple onto the sidewalk—a girl with a bleached blonde pixie cut holding a paperback and a man in leather, a cigarette caught in his pouting lips. Bond and Q, in their immaculate business casual, stand out even in the darkness.

Q can't stand still or get his eyes to focus but still he takes a moment to rest against the brick wall, rubbing at his ribs. He keeps looking at his watch as though he wants to take it apart and put it back together again eight or nine times. "It's all a bit surreal," Q mutters, and Bond can't help thinking that he wouldn't be so lucid with his thoughts if he weren't verging on insanity. "To be back and see London the same, even though I'm fully aware nothing really is. Moneypenny is alive and my sister is dead. And you...well, it's not exactly the fantasy homecoming that sustained me in times of despondency."

Bond thinks about apologizing but is distracted by the information he has just gained, by the fact he may be the only person at Six other than M himself who knows that Q has a sister and that sister is now deceased. It's the most personal thing Q has ever shared with him and Bond wonders if the younger man even meant to.

Q straightens himself up and begins to walk away at even brisker pace than before, in the direction opposite the way they came. "Don't follow me, 007. Not now."

"Get some sleep," Bond calls after him, without much conviction, knowing it'll be ignored.

He looks back over at the couple in front of the pub. They're now embracing with a kind of desperation that projects the essence of something simple and true. Bond realizes he hasn't even touched Q since he's been back. He's been purposefully distant, consumed by his own feelings of guilt and responsibility as well as the knowledge that emotional attachment is what got him in this mess in the first place, what has always gotten him into trouble in the past. And yet somehow he actually manages to be surprised that Q is pushing him away. It all comes from the fact they are caught in a limbo in which they don't want to properly start over and yet can't pick up where they left off, because entirely too much has occurred in the interim. To start over would be undo everything they used to find solace in with each other; to pick up where they left off is to disregard the mistakes that Bond has made and the torment Q has had to endure.

As he begins the journey back to his Chelsea flat, Bond comes to the realization that he is sure of one thing, and one thing only.

_We can't go back. _


	7. Simple

Three days pass and Bond goes back to ignoring his paperwork and lurking around Q-Branch, feline-like, his presence at times invisible and at other times suffocating. However, it becomes apparent that Q chose well when he made Julian his second, because the man has become nearly unflappable. Ten months as acting head of Q-Branch has made it almost possible for him to ignore Bond's icy aura, and Bond can't help but be slightly impressed by that.

But on the fourth day, Bond arrives in Q-Branch to find Julian returned to his desk, no longer the nexus point of a worldwide organization. Bond does a quick scan of the room, deduces that Q must be in seclusion and crosses the floor in several long strides.

He finds Q sprawled on the floor of the newly renovated office.

Instinct, and unexpected kind of irrational panic, has him kneeling by Q's side in a second and reaching for a pulse before he notices the details. The cup of tea balanced on Q's chest, the bluetooth headset in his ear, the laptop half an arm's length away. Q gives him an easily judgmental look and starts to speak logistics with whoever's in the field—009 in Astana, from the sound of it. In one smooth movement he replaces the cup of tea resting on his solar plexus for the laptop and begins to type and talk with a cadence close to rhythmic. It's only when Q folds his right leg up to his chest through clenched teeth that Bond makes the connection as to why the younger man has opted for the floor: physical therapy.

Bond lets out a swear and settles back on his haunches. Both being with Q and being away from him, these days, leaves him exhausted. He thinks back to when he first began to take an interest in Q, when all they had was banter between missions, and how eventually Bond got tired of waiting as he watched himself age. In the months after Skyfall, he had found himself taking surprising solace in his trips to Q-Branch, in Q's wit and stoicism and obvious complexity. And Bond has never been able to avoid a risk when the pay off seems to promise even the slightest semblance of contentment, even if he knows tragedy follows him like a second shadow. Even when he's been burned so many times in the past.

Maybe it was inevitable, he thinks, that they should end up here. Usually this is the point at which Bond is alone in every aspect of the word, but against all odds Q has survived the danger that being close to Bond invariably inflicts. And it's so unexpected they're both left reeling.

Beside him, Q's voice has gotten slightly more urgent. "Take a left...no, sorry, right."

Even feet away, Bond can hear 009 screech "Which one is it, Q?!"

A few more uneven directions, and 009 makes it to the extraction point with only a few close calls to show for it. The Quartermaster, though, looks noticeably ruffled, and it's an expression so uncommon on the job that Bond fixes him with his most penetrating gaze.

"Morning, 007," Q murmurs wearily, slinking with a wince to his feet as his back protests characteristically. He tosses his earwig onto his desk with an unusual discontent.

"You never call me James," Bond muses, still observing the younger man with unrestrained intensity.

"You refer to me as 'Q'," he retorts with his back to Bond.

"Only because I have yet to find evidence of your real name."

"I suppose we're at an impasse, then." He turns to face Bond, leaning against his massive, junkyard of a desk. There's definitely something off about him, that much is clear, and it's got nothing to do with the fact he's spent the last three days at home, trying to rid himself of psychosis. Because that's Q's usual routine, and despite these unfortunate episodes he is still the most efficient Quartermaster MI6 has ever seen. No, Bond suspects this is definitely to do with the last ten months, along with the deceased sister whose existence Bond is only now aware of. It is Q's first day fully back on the job, and he knows it's horribly callous of all of them to expect him to be 100%, or even anywhere near it. The problem, though, is that someone in Q's position doesn't have the luxury of having an off day.

"Much work to do?" Bond asks mundanely, shoving his real thoughts further down his throat.

"Yes," Q mutters. "With Christmas approaching I generally like to give the minions some breathing room."

"Do you have plans for the holiday?" asks Bond, thinking back to that first Christmas, and Q's jarring question: _Why do you always assume I'm alone in this world?_

"Chinese food, mostly."

"Right," Bond nods, remembering. "With family?"

For the first time, Q meets his eyes, studying him for a good seven seconds. He doesn't come to any noticeable conclusion and replies simply, "That's the plan."

"Plans don't always seem to work for us," Bond attempts to smile but doesn't quite make it.

Q, however, lets the corner of his lip turn up, and for a moment the air is less tense than it's ever been since he returned from Iceland. "No, I suppose not."

Bond thinks himself an opportunist at heart, and so he sees the opening and takes it without regret. He steps forward smoothly, using one hand to angle Q's face upward and pulls their lips together with a softness that surprises both of them. It's all consuming, tender, and reminiscent of a simplicity they've never actually had. When they pull away, Q keeps his hand pressed against the line of Bond's spine, heat radiating out from his fingers.

Eyes still half closed, Q murmurs, "You'e no idea how long I've been waiting for that."

Bond thinks about apologizing for the delay, but, as per usual, he doesn't.

m m m

Q is keeping his hours in check, in line with his routine when coming off a bout of mania. He leaves the office by seven and Bond, having spent the day avoiding Moneypenny and her half-hearted attempts to get him to do his paperwork, does the same. The two men leave together, finally side by side, and embark into the winter night.

A winter mix has been drizzling down for the better part of the day and with the loss of the sun the wetness is already turning to ice on the sidewalk. Bond refuses to bother with the tube system and Q finds himself laughing as he lifts one hand to signal a cab. Back in Q's tiny, studio flat, they take things at a leisurely pace and remain unburdened by deep thought. Q's cabinets are remarkably devoid of any sort of real food, so they order in and lounge about as if it's some sort of ritual, as if it's always been like this. Bond isn't usually one to let himself be at all unkempt but still, here he is, tie off and shirtsleeves rolled up, with one leg folded under him as he leans into Q's decidedly subpar settee.

Q switches between standing and lying prone on the floor with a pillow as they watch crap telly and banter ridiculously. Even with it's quirky edges, the situation is undeniably domestic. Bond isn't sure if that fact should worry him, but he can't make himself fret when peace surrounds him like a fog.

Eventually, Q submits to seeing how long his spine will let him sit, leaning against Bond with pillows very carefully supporting the more tender parts of injuries both old and new. Bond winds an arm around him, tilts his chin up for another kiss and before long Q is flat on his back and all concerns about sitting are erased from both their minds.

m m m

Leisure is clearly the theme of the evening as they lay splayed across Q's bed, the flat cold but the bedding warm. Bond's eyes roam over the pale, lean form of the Quartermaster, contemplating the unassuming nature of his physique. First look always seems to do Q no justice—he projects an aura of instability that can easily be converted to the assumption that he is either fragile or vulnerable or both. But it's too facile an explanation. Though he is certainly unstable, it's a volatility that Bond has deduced comes from anger. Yes, Q is vulnerable, but there's also a sharpness to him that is hard to read in soft hair and cardigans. The acrimony in him is well hidden, but wait long enough and it will show itself in the disgusted curl of a lip and a phrasing that never conceals the truth. And the source of the anger is not hard to guess—a lifetime of battling his own body in every way possible will easily embitter a man. It's an anger that comes from fear, a fear of losing control, a fear that perhaps losing control is even inevitable. Q is easily smart enough to ask the questions about what he'll do when he can no longer exercise enough to keep his mind and back in check, when he'll no longer be able to channel his energies into MI6. In some ways, he's in the same position as Bond—a slow decay is not a bearable option. Quick death is all they can hope for.

Bond swears inwardly. He's been doing far too much thinking these days.

Q is dozing beside him and Bond reaches out one arm to pull them closer together. Q lets out something between a moan and a grunt and curls into him. Bond is repelled by the idea of disturbing the boy's calm but the question has already formed in his head. They can't go back to what they had, when Q was a mystery and Bond somehow didn't see that as a problem. He's been invaded, irretrievably, by curiosity.

"Q?"

"Mmm?" He stirs slightly, a hint of a smile raising his cheek.

"Tell me about your sister."


	8. Fuse

The way Q's eyes are suddenly open and strikingly clear is enough for Bond to know that Q was less asleep a moment ago than he appeared. Q shifts his head and Bond is also made aware of the dark circles under the boy's eyes. It's not an unusual sight but now it has gained an even more sinister connotation, considering Bond knows what it feels like to have traces of trauma and torture enforcing their own special brand of insomnia.

Despite his sleep deprivation, though, the softness of the light and the sheets seem to have Q's lips moving, as he fingers the healing wound on the top of his thigh.

"Berenice," he murmurs. "Her name is...was..." The words curve upwards into something close to a question, but they find no answer.

"Was she like you?"

"Worse," he answers, his eyes unfocused. "And far more undervalued."

"What happened to her?"

"Drug overdose. A week after I was taken. The events are undoubtedly connected."

"You two were close, then, I take it?"

Q takes in a wincing breath. "Shit...I don't know. The truth of the matter is I was the favorite child, shamelessly doted on, and it was hardly a secret to anyone."

"And she was overlooked?" Bond realizes he's lapsed, once again, into espionage mode. He's extracting information—and Q is either unbothered or oblivious, both of which seem equally tenuous.

"She, inevitably, spiraled out of control. She tried to commit suicide while we were in Copenhagen, and I thought that would mean she would get help...that my parents..." he trails off into a long, steadying breath. Bond finds, oddly, that he isn't sure what to do. In the past, on missions, he would comfort and coo and seem _oh so_ genuine. With Q, though, to do that would seem artificial, even offensive. It's unnerving, though, to find that he's not sure how to sound sincere anymore.

He's being self-centered, however, and quickly diverts his attention back to Q, whose lips are moving without any sound escaping. He's surprisingly incoherent—Bond is unused to this lack of eloquence from the even-toned quartermaster. Eventually, the words string themselves together.

"My parents thought they lost both children that week I was taken. Six wouldn't tell them anything, they rightfully assumed the worst. Berenice was found in Sheffield a few days later. She was lying on a park bench. I think...she knew what she was doing. Insane, perhaps, but I know what it feels like to be out of control and still aware of it."

"You think she did it because of you?"

"I don't know," he digs the palms of his hands into his eye sockets and rolls away from Bond, across the mattress. "My parents don't know...god."

"It's not your fault. You had no control over what Tove did."

Q shakes his head soundlessly. Bond can't see his face, only a scarred back and a mass of curls. Bond moves without thinking, slipping his arms around Q and pressing his nose into the younger man's nape. He surprises even himself when he says, "I'm sorry." All of it almost feels natural. A naturalness he could get used to.

Q just shakes his head again.

m m m

Four days in Algeria and Bond spends every free moment, of which there are few, contemplating what Q has finally let him in on. It's strange to think of Q with living, breathing parents—he had found it so easy to assume that they were both orphans, perhaps because of that fiercely independent streak he's always perceived in Q. He supposes it's something that doesn't always have to be earned through tragedy, or at least not in the immediate sense.

Q's voice, slightly more gravelly than usual, guides him through Tamanrasset. When, after several similar mishaps, Q tells him to take a left onto a road that seems to go straight out into the Sahara, he finally asks the question at the back of every field agent's mind for the last few weeks.

"Q, are you alright?"

"Fine, 007."

"Are you fit for duty?"

The hesitation is answer enough. And yet still: "003's about to be executed. I"m handing you off to Julian, Bond."

"Q—" but it's too late. Julian's voice crackles to life, tells him to turn around and head back toward the oasis town. He does what he's told.

m m m

He connects through Algiers and then Paris before making it back to Heathrow. A remarkably nondescript black sedan is waiting on the curb for him, an unfamiliar Six driver in the front seat. Bond grunts in his direction as he settles into the back seat. Not shockingly, it's raining in London. Bond is ambivalent.

He doesn't bother to stop at his flat, but lets the driver take him directly to the office. It's only once he's several subfloors down that he realizes there's some sort of commotion, and in moments he's pinpointed it's source: Q-Branch.

Instinct has him in a sprint within the second.

The minions are all in various states of useless panic, with Julian the only one apparently capable of rational thought. And, judging by the shove he gives 001, he also seems to be fearless. It doesn't take Bond long to figure out the situation. There's a fine sheen of sweat across Julian's dark forehead as he stands between a wheezing Q and a furious, cocktail dress clad 001. He's got one hand outstretched to keep 001 at bay and the other hand ready to reach for the sidearm under his indigo suit jacket.

Though Julian seems to have contained the situation, Bond still crosses the room in several quick strides and takes it upon himself to incapacitate 001 with a swift arm bar. She appears to come to her senses, throwing Bond a venomous glare. She throws a vaguely disgusted look at Q and Julian and mutters viciously to Bond, "Just because you're fucking him doesn't mean he's not going to get the rest of us killed."

Bond ignores her and moves toward where Q is beginning to recover his breath. Julian shouts at the minions to calm down and get back to work. Bond takes Q's pulse without thinking and finds red marks where Q had managed to break out of 001's chokehold.

"What the hell happened?" Bond asks after Julian has bundled the three of them into Q's office.

"I botched her mission," Q replies, voice like a well-worn record. The dark circles under his eyes are even more pronounced than usual and his whole posture reeks of exhaustion as he rubs at his neck, teeth gritted. "Couldn't hack the doors fast enough and didn't have an escape route prepared. Nearly got her arrested by the Colombian police," he adds matter-of-factly. "Naturally, she was upset."

And upset double-O's have a tendency toward violence.

"Thankfully, Julian was here to contain the situation," Q says, with a weak, slightly morbid smile.

"Q," Bond sighs.

"I'm fine."

"You're going to be considerably less fine if you get an agent killed," says Bond, and Q looks decidedly taken aback by his bluntness.

"How dare you—"

"He's right, obviously," Julian intercedes, and what he says is far from his usually mild-mannered self. "I'm not going to watch you disintegrate. Go home and come back when you're actually ready." He says _when_ very pointedly, instead of _if._ It seems entirely too feasible that a job as stressful as modern quartermaster won't pair well with an already damaged boy who's just been damaged again, so deliberately, for months on end.

"Going home isn't going to do me any goddamn good," Q's eyes swivel between them with an anger so intense that he must be on the verge of insanity to be able to spark it. "You both know it. Everything gets worse when I'm stagnant."

"It's only a matter of time before M has you sent home himself. Better to go on your own terms. What other option is there?" Julian retorts.

"I have no options," Q turns and braces himself against his desk, looking remarkably deflated. "As always."

Bond lets out a breath and directs a look at Julian, the message clear. Julian clears out respectfully, the only sound the smooth click as the door glides shut behind him. The two of them alone does nothing to bridge the silence for several long minutes. Q steadies himself and Bond tries to find the words to make some difference.

_Be genuine_, he begs himself.

He doesn't think when he approaches Q and pulls him into an embrace. On a mission words are one of his greatest allies—even when he's disarmed and stranded he's still got a silver tongue for persuasion. Here, though, words are useless.


	9. Dangerous Animals

**Author's Note: It's okay if everyone's totally forgotten about me. I understand. At this point, I'm not super satisfied with how this concept has turned out and I just want to finish it and get it out of my head. One chapter left after this, and then we can all be free. Thanks for reading, if you're out there :)**

In the embrace, Bond can't see Q's face. It's probably better for both of them this way. Bond lets his chin rest on unkempt curls. It's an animalistic kind of comfort, in it's reliance on scent and heat. To be genuine does not always require verbosity, Bond finds. At Six, they're all a little more feral than they care to admit.

When Q pulls away, he seems a little more in control, though worryingly twitchy. He needs to shave, his eyes are bloodshot, and there's a spot on his tie that would've driven him up a wall a year ago. He's seen Q in many states of disarray but this one is far more striking in severity. Bond runs a thumb over the man's cheek with a tenderness that he bothers with for few others.

"You should get home," Bond murmurs.

"And then what?"

It gives him pause for a moment, and his eyes lock onto the grey of a skylight above them. "We resurrect."

m m m

As Bond has integrated himself into Q's life so have his things, and so Q's bedside table now hosts a menagerie of items. Spare bifocals for Q and reading glasses for Bond, an ace bandage and the remains of a cell phone processor. A bulldog wrapped in a Union Jack and a butane torch. Bond is admiring the coalescence of two lives just as Q jerks awake with a gasp, knuckles going white as he grips his specialty Tempur-Pedic pillow.

Bond waits for Q's back muscles to unclench before reaching out to him. "Alright?"

Q gives a ragged, unconvincing reply. "Getting there."

Bond hums sympathetically in response.

"What do you do...when it's like this?" Q meets his eyes, his youth all the more evident when not bespectacled.

"You've seen it. I drink." And it works too. Enough alcohol and he doesn't have to worry about awaking every forty-five minutes in a haze of instinctual violence and the remnants of memories he seems to always fail at warding off.

"Sounds like a solid plan." Q makes a motion like he wants to get out of bed, but Bond grabs his wrist.

"Won't that just upset your mania?"

Q deflates against the pillows. The despondency in his body language is too such an extent that Bond has to physically impede himself from wincing. Q hates pity, even when he's earned it.

m m m

Monday morning comes and Bond leaves Q lying in what appears to be the first deep sleep he's had in weeks, possibly months. Exhaustion, for the mean time, seems to have overruled both mania and trauma. The brain's tendency toward self-preservation has finally triumphed over it's own damage.

Mary Goodnight greets him with a "Morning, James," and a pile of paperwork from the Algeria recon, but he ignores the latter and finds Moneypenny in his office, waiting for him. She's looking down very intently as she tries to create something recognizable out of her once immaculate handwriting, now shaky and hesitant.

"Oh, you're here early," her eyebrows lift. "I was going to leave you a note. We're doing the final interviews with Dae-Jung Baek today, before his sentencing hearing. Thought you'd want to be there again."

"Now?"

"We can move it up, if that's better."

"Sure."

She braces against the desk and chair in order to get to her feet without listing to the left. He lets her lead the way downstairs to the interrogation rooms. Once on her feet, she's like the old Moneypenny again, chin held aloft and stride so purposeful it's nearly unchallengeable. If there's one thing the woman will never let go of it's her own intense brand of dignity.

Down in one of the concrete rooms of the basement, Dae-Jung Baek has been lead in again, looking cleaner and more upright than Bond has ever seen him.

"That's new," he rumbles at Moneypenny. "His eyes are clear."

Even with his hands and feet manacled, his gaze scans the room, his tongue darting over his lips. There's something undeniably wild about him that Bond hadn't detected before, if it had been there at all. He finds himself concerned for the safety of the interrogating agent, even with Baek's limbs bound between two armed MPs.

Mallory, giving Bond a weary look, joins them as Dae-Jung is run through the preliminaries again.

"Were you aware of Tove Baek's plan to betray MI6?" the agent in the room is asking.

"Yes," Dae-Jung says indifferently, eyes flitting toward the two-way mirror.

"Were you aware of her intention to capture and hold the quartermaster?"

"No," he pauses here, but whether his hesitation is an act put on or an actual moment of contemplation, it's unclear. "But I know why she did it."

Mallory and Moneypenny have been muttering to each other about another case, but both of their heads swivel at this admission, and Bond snaps to attention at the same second. The right side of Dae-Jung's mouth twitches, like he's amused by the reactions he can't see.

Moneypenny gives an affirmative noise into the earwig of the agent in the room with him, and they follow orders to persist down the road of the only real breakthrough they've had. "And why is that?"

Dae-Jung traces a scratch on the metal table in front of him, trying to hide the way his lips are curling upwards. "Q was meant to be a bargaining chip," he explains conversationally, each word slow and languid. "Should things not have gone according to plan and I was put in danger, Tove was going to use him to secure my safety. It was a misstep on her part, as it turned out."

"Do you think he's telling the truth?" Moneypenny murmurs.

"He certainly thinks he is," Bond mutters in response.

"It fits with what we've deduced about Tove," Mallory offers. "Her judgement easily swayed by anarchy and, apparently, sentimentality."

"It occurs to me now, naturally," Dae-Jung is saying, perfectly lucid and nonchalant, as though discussing last week's match or tomorrow's budget report, "that had she not gone after Q, she might not be dead."

And Bond has to agree with him. Wouldn't they have hunted her so long and so ruthlessly if she hadn't had Q in her grip? Bond might not have even bothered to worm his way into that last Iceland mission, might not have even bothered to pull the trigger on the rifle that blew her brains out over the ice.

"As it is, though, she signed her own death certificate," Dae-Jung adds, with an air of finality. These are words he's practiced many times, Bond is certain, by the way his lips so carefully find each syllable without the slightest unsteadiness. Why he's bothered to come up with this little speech, a post-mortem condemnation of his wife's decisions, Bond can't fathom.

He voices his befuddlement to Moneypenny, who shrugs and tries, "Closure, maybe? That's all he's got left, I suspect."

Bond scowls. The expression on Dae-Jung's face is putting him on alert, and he's never been one to ignore his instincts.

Dae-Jung doesn't have much to say after that; the hint of a smile drains from his eyes and he returns to the monotone Bond is far more familiar with and, at some points, almost pities. If Bond were the sort for reflection, he would note that there is a comparison to be made between him and Dae-Jung. Maybe he's even got common ground with Tove. But he's not going to dwell, not anymore. Tove is dead, Dae-Jung is going to prison for a very long time. Bond would much rather focus on the fact that Q is alive, mostly, and slowly making his toward becoming an entity he can actually understand.

The interview ends. The observers split up, Mallory and Moneypenny heading for the upper floors and Bond toward Q-Branch, letting the tapping of his shoes on the floor tiles ease all deep thought from his mind.

He's halfway there when things start to go awry.

Bond perceives the shift a second before anything happens; he's already taken a stance and squared his shoulders by the time the doors lock and the lights dim. The air around him buzzes with anticipation, and years in the field have made him sensitive to it on a level even he doesn't understand. He's only a few hundred yards out of Q-Branch, but by the time he jogs down the hall he remembers that the doors their will be locked too.

By no means, though, does that mean Q is safe.

He hasn't bothered to return the Walther from his last mission. It's tucked clandestinely in the shoulder holster beneath his left arm, and its weight against his torso is as comforting as ever. His hand twitches for it involuntarily when he hears the commotion coming up the emergency stairs to his right. By the time the heavy door swings open, he's crouched like a predatory animal, gun raised and steady.

He doesn't even flinch when he meets Dae-Jung's eyes, or Q's, caught beneath Dae-Jung's rigid left bicep.

Bond's expression is one of careful indifference as he takes in the scene. Q, still in his coat and with his bag slung over his good shoulder, clearly just arrived at work. Bond assesses the other man's mobility—the wound in his thigh, the thick cast around his arm—and decides with a little motivation Q may still be able to move quickly if given the opportunity. He turns his calculating gaze on Dae-Jung in the next second, sees the reckless abandon in pupils partly obscured by the glare of the overhead light on his glasses. He's got a military sidearm in his hand, likely stolen off an MP during his escape, and is half-heartedly pushing it against the curls at Q's temple, even though Bond can see from here that the safety's on. This must be is his last stand, the last act of solidarity with Tove, Bond deduces, and can't help but grimace.

"You know how this ends," Bond says evenly. There's something like understanding in the air.

Dae-Jung nods, unblinking. "Just make it quick."

In the end, Dae-Jung falls with a limp thud to the linoleum floor, and Q is sprayed with blood.

"I didn't need saving, 007," Q says primly, wiping the blood off his glasses on the edge of his dark jumper. His shaking hands betray him. Q may know pain, but Bond knows death.

"No, I just wanted to," Bond sighs, squatting stiffly to check Dae-Jung's nonexistent pulse. Bond won't sleep tonight, even if Dae-Jung has ended up where he wanted to be in the end.

He turns his attention back to Q, who's standing unevenly to his right, looking wearily at the scene at his feet. Bond approaches him carefully. It doesn't matter how many times Q has heard him kill over the airwaves; right before his eyes and in cold blood is something else entirely. He doesn't pull away, though, when Bond folds his hands over Q's, steadying them in his larger palms.

"I'm sorry," Bond hears himself say, and thinks it might be the closest thing he's gotten to sincere with anyone. "For everything."

"It's not your fault," Q intones. "But it's alright, of course. Always."

Back-up, naturally, arrives too late to be of any use beyond cleanup, but no one's particularly surprised that 007's taken care of things. Bond doesn't taken his hand from the small of Q's back, though, and as long as their hands are linked, they're almost stable.


	10. All Apologies

**Author's Note: Here we go, finally finished. It's a miracle. Thanks for tolerating my unprofessionalism, and thank you so much, of course, for reading. In this chapter, I mention Richard Connell's short story _The Most Dangerous Game_. A quote of some interest that has stuck with me from it: "Sometimes I think evil is a tangible thing—with wavelengths, just as sound and light have."**

Q, as has become his habit, takes a roundabout route out of Q-Branch in order to avoid the spot where Dae-Jung Baek was killed. Though the area has long been cleared and there are no visual remains of what happened there, he has yet to see Q manage to even look in its general direction.

So Q heads for the back stairs, arriving in the parking deck rather than on the sidewalk. He's not waited for Bond, but Bond follows anyways, and Q pauses for him, as per usual, at the elevators down to street level. Bond saunters up to his side, his eyes latching on to the glow of the lift button.

"You always complain I don't take you anywhere nice," Q sighs, a smirk gracing the side of his mouth.

"So you're going treat me to the finer things tonight, I take it?"

"A rare experience for you, I'm sure," Q snorts. "And no, I'm not."

"Hmm," contemplates Bond. "Well, that doesn't leave but so many possibilities."

Q smirks again, but avoids eye contact. Maybe he's afraid he'll give his little secret away, or maybe meeting Bond's eyes will only summon the image of the Dae-Jung back to the forefront of his brain. Bond feels his stomach flip over at the thought of the latter. Q's been dreaming about it, he can tell. While Bond lies awake, Q tosses and turns, and when he rouses himself Bond sees him rub at imaginary blood splatters on his cheekbone. As if the boy needs more reasons to keep him awake at night.

Q may not blame him anymore, but that does not mean Bond has absolved himself. But, he rationalizes, so be it – guilt and its many derivatives is nothing new.

And Q is alive. Maybe he's still a little amazed by that, because sometimes it seems to overshadow nearly everything else.

They head underground, and Q doesn't linger before getting on a train going east. It's a little past the usual end of the work day, but they still have to stand, Q holding on to one of the rails and Bond not bothering, staying perfectly upright despite the bumps in the ride. They don't exchange words, but the older man finds his eyes darting toward Q every few seconds, taking in every twitch of his face as the train halts or pushes forward, every ambiguous blink of his eyes when he catches Bond's stare.

They get off and embark into a frigidly cold night, accompanied by a light rain that hardens the remnants of last week's snow with a fine layer of crunchy ice. Bond watches Q hobble along a stride in front of him, waits for the younger man to loose his footing on the uneven ground. He knows how to balance himself, though, and his feet move with a remarkable level of precision over the slippery surface. Twenty years of impairment have taught him well.

They arrive in front of a four story dwelling, vaguely Victorian, sandwiched on both sides by high rise flats. On the third floor, Bond can see warm orange lights illuminating the windows around thick, traditional drapes. Q doesn't comment as Bond observes, just inserts his key into the lock and holds the door for Bond to follow. And, of course, he does.

The stairwell is dark, but Bond can tell by the way the carpet gives under his feet that it's expensive, probably plush and vivid in full light. They reach the third floor landing, and despite the darkness, Q reaches confidently for the push button lock. Bond sees the glimmer of the gold mail slot as Q pushes the door inwards; the plaque above it reads _Honeychurch_.

Inside, they're immediately bathed in the orange glow of side lamps reflecting off leather furniture and hard bound books and dark wood wall paneling. It smells like tea and warmth, like old paper and long nights. This is Q, he's sure of it. This is the missing piece.

Q hangs his coat in the tiled foyer and Bond follows suit. Before they can move into the promised warmth of the next room, though, a man appears, small framed with a sharp chin and calculating eyes. He hardly notices Bond.

"Ezra," he sighs, and traps Q in a hug.

They pull away, and the man doesn't take his eyes off Q, who gazes back with a smile Bond has never seen him wear before. Q motions toward Bond. "Dad, this is James. James, this is my father, Kurt."

Before Bond can offer any nicety, before he can take in the way _James_ has slithered off Q's tongue for the first time, there comes a screech and a broad shouldered woman with a bun of black curls collides with Q. She holds him so desperately close that Bond can only see her olive hands, where they rest against Q's shoulder blades.

"Our Ezra is home," she croaks, holding Q's face and kissing him on the cheek. "They wouldn't tell us anything. And you were gone for so long...we didn't how to think of you," she says, words coming fast and wavering in the thick air. "And with Berenice so soon after -"

Q quickly breaks eye contact. For a moment, Bond watches all three of them turn their eyes on the floor to regroup. A foreign feeling pervades him: impotency. He's unsure of what to do or how to act and, for him, there's nothing more unnerving than indecision. Q's parents seem unsure also; between words, one of them always seems to be reaching out to touch Q, to assure themselves that he's actually here.

When he recovers, Q introduces his mother as Rivka, and Bond shakes hands with both her and her husband. Q does not specify his relation to Bond, but his parents don't seem to mind, or perhaps notice, this oversight and immediately launch into the usual round of questioning. It's been a long, long time since Bond has met a significant other's parents, and in the interval he's become a man with considerably more secrets.

"You work with Ezra, I take it?" Rivka asks, voice benign enough but eyes searching.

"I do," Bond admits, and is not pressed for more. With relief, he notes that they clearly have some idea of what he and Q can and cannot say.

Kurt butts in with a question about Bond's accent and the charm and chivalry that have gotten him through so many missions kicks in. Here, though, he finds a note of sincerity in his own voice – perhaps because the voice that's usually tight in his ear is beside him, rather than a thousands of miles away. Q, inadvertently steadying him, as always.

An extra place is set for Bond at the table without any invitation needed; they settle into a meal without any hint of awkwardness or unease over his presence. Q slides very carefully into a chair, but no one makes any remark when he has to stand a few minutes later. Bond is included but not bombarded by the conversation, and while Q and his parents vigilantly navigate around any mention of Berenice or Q's time away, Bond's eyes wander, from the potted cacti to the Ukrainian scarf turned wall tapestry to the picture frames on the mantle. A younger Q and a smaller dark haired girl stare back at him.

Bond is listening to Rivka finish up the telling of a scene from her trip to Kuwait, unaware that Bond has a surprisingly similar story, when Q puts a cap on the harmony of the evening. He looks at his phone for the time and decides, "James and I should be off, I suppose. Work in the morning and all."

His parents have him swear six ways to Sunday that he'll visit again before next week, and to bring Bond with him, too. Bond feels something twinge, oddly, and it takes him a moment to identify it.

Homesickness.

Not for Scotland or Skyfall, but for what could've been. For the parents he could've had.

And Q, for all he's lost and all his struggle, at least has this warm place, this section of his life where the madness of it all can't quite penetrate. And he's chosen to share it with Bond.

m m m

Back on the tube, the masses have cleared. They share the nearly empty carriage with some drunk lads in khakis and a woman in a skin tight dress and a Kate Spade handbag. Bond and Q are ignored entirely.

"Ezra," Bond muses. "It suits you."

Q looks toward the CCTV cameras wearily. "Yes, it does," he relents. "Unfortunately, it's my middle name."

"Oh?"

Q chews his thumbnail a moment, then shifts in his seat with a wince. They've been on the train barely six minutes, but it's been a long evening. Finally, he says, "Have you ever read _The Most Dangerous Game?_"

"The novel?"

"Short story, technically," Q makes a face before continuing. "Gentleman washes up on an island off the coast of Brazil, finds himself being hunted for sport by a madman. My father is quite the fan of the surreal, when it comes to literature." Q takes his phone out of his pocket, and though Bond can't quite see what his left thumb is up to, he suspects Q is wiping the memories of every camera and recording device in a mile radius. He adds, "The main character's name is Sanger Rainsford. So I became Sanger Ezra Honeychurch."

"Christ," Bond snorts. "That's quite a mouthful."

"Ezra is fine," Q sighs, tilting his head up to meet Bond's eyes. "Q is probably better, but perhaps not for you."

Bond appraises him newly, taking into account what he's been shown this evening. Ezra Honeychurch is a different man then Q – not an enigma, not alone, not lost along the way. Bond has lost Q and found someone else, someone he might actually be able to hold on to.

"Ezra," Bond offers a hand. "It's nice to meet you."

"Pleasure, James," Q smiles in that understated way of his, holds out a hand saturated with meaning.

They shake hands, but don't let go of each other afterwards. Q intertwines his fingers with Bond's, lets their hands rest against his thigh. And even when the train stops and they rise to head into the night, he doesn't let go. Q's hands are not soft - they're as calloused and firm and slender as they've ever been. That, at least, hasn't changed. 

And for James Bond, that's enough.


End file.
